Birmingham, Alabama (Platts)--20Feb2013/110 pm EST/1810 GMT
Public Service Electric & Gas has asked New Jersey regulators to approve a $3.9 billion plan to protect its electric and gas systems from increasingly severe weather. The state's largest utility said Wednesday it would spend $2.6 billion during the next five years and $1.3 billion in the following five years to complete the program. "Reliability is no longer enough; we must also focus on the resiliency of our systems to withstand natural disasters," said Ralph Izzo, chairman and CEO of Public Service Energy Group, PSE&G's parent company. Article continues below... Sign up for Megawatt Daily Megawatt Daily provides detailed coverage of power prices in major US and Canadian electricity markets, up-to-date information about solicitations and supply deals, and information about complex state and federal power regulations.
Public Service Electric & Gas has asked New Jersey regulators to approve a $3.9 billion plan to protect its electric and gas systems from increasingly severe weather. The state's largest utility said Wednesday it would spend $2.6 billion during the next five years and $1.3 billion in the following five years to complete the program. "Reliability is no longer enough; we must also focus on the resiliency of our systems to withstand natural disasters," said Ralph Izzo, chairman and CEO of Public Service Energy Group, PSE&G's parent company.
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Megawatt Daily provides detailed coverage of power prices in major US and Canadian electricity markets, up-to-date information about solicitations and supply deals, and information about complex state and federal power regulations.
The planned upgrades would have reduced the 2 million outages from Superstorm Sandy by about 800,000 and reduced the restoration time for the remaining customers, the company said. The utility plans to spend $1.7 billion to raise, relocate or protect all switching stations and substations affected by recent storms and those located in newly designated flood zones. It would spend $1.04 billion to replace and modernize 750 miles of low-pressure cast iron gas mains in or near flood areas. The company also would spend $454 million to deploy smart grid technologies and $215 million to improve pole distribution systems. Another $200 million would be spent to create redundancy in the system and $60 million would be spent to place underground 20 miles of overhead distribution lines. The company would spend $140 million to protect nine natural gas metering stations and a liquefied natural gas station either affected by Sandy or located in flood zones. The cost of the improvements could be offset by lower natural gas prices and the retirement of transition charges related to deregulated supply markets, and effectively made without raising customers' bills, Izzo said. --Mary Powers, newsdesk@platts.com --Edited by Jason Lindquist, jason_lindquist@platts.com
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